Musings on Science

Steampunk Cannot Die

A lot of the sci-fi I’ve been reading recently has been of the steampunk variety. There’s a certain something about them that is incredibly charming, and in fact completely different from the aesthetic we’ve come to expect of all things technological, these days.

First, I want to take a moment to reflect on the gorgeousness of this collection of short stories:

The stories themselves, by the way, are very good — not mind-blowingly so, but worth the price of the book.

I’m aware that there are various themes that steampunk usually strives to encompass, but I have to admit I’m woefully unaware of what those are, and how they work. I’m hoping my next trip to the library will yield some reading on this.

In the meantime, though, I’ve been thinking about why they appeal to me personally. And I think part of it has to do with the contrast I mentioned above, what I’ll call the iPod culture vs. steampunk.

It’s been pointed out before that Apple has exhausted every permutation of the word “magical” in the way it refers to its products. I’m an admirer of Apple’s obsessive attention to user-oriented design, but I find it disturbing that they’d actually associate a technological product with the arcane and impossible.

Apple doesn’t create its products by waving magic wands forged in a dragon’s lair or something — it recruits people who, despite being geniuses, have to follow the same rules of programming and physics that the rest of the world does. So to suggest that their products exist in some metaphysical realm which no one else can even dream of… that’s is a little absurd.

What’s worse is the kind of impression that gives a consumer. Real effort and compromise went into that product — it didn’t just appear out of thin air. I’d say the whole “magical” concept completely distances the user from the reality of what’s working inside it.

But then again, that’s also reflective of my philosophy in general. I disagree with the notion that breaking anything down into its scientific components reduces its potential to thrill and inspire (for a more thorough exposition on the subject, I recommend this link).

This is where steampunk comes in.

The aesthetic of the movement — setting aside its political, social or historical implications — is vastly different. It’s not simply that the analog replaces the digital, or that software is substituted by mechanical components. It’s that the vastness, the scale and the degree of machine-human interaction make the final product so much more visible to the consumer.

Software doesn’t seem to exist in the steampunk world; everything must be made mechanical and microprocessors are clearly out of the picture. That accounts for the huge scale of the endeavor, which means that every rotation and click of the final product can actually be seen. As impressive as the iPod is, you simply can’t observe the logic gates that drive the operations. For anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with the technology involved, the finished product is a work of human ingenuity. For anyone else, it would be a black box of, well, magic.

And then there’s the very design of all things steampunk. It’s almost instinctive to imagine delicate gear mechanisms and engraved brass when steampunk enters the picture (a Doctor Who episode I was rewatching recently did this quite beautifully here and here). It’s difficult to find two more disparate styles — today’s impetus to streamline everything, and steampunk’s baroque tendencies. I suppose that’s a product of the times as well, but I take it as a philosophy too — a point of view that acknowledges and celebrates complexity.

And on that note, I leave you with several lovely examples of objects that, if not strictly steampunk, are in the general neighborhood of it.

A Lego robot arm with several degrees of freedom; can grasp objects and pour a glass of water.